Urbanization effects on urban vegetable farmers adaptation: Evidence from Ghana

Abstract

This study argues that urban change and urban agriculture are linked and this relationship affects urban farmers. This causes urban farmers to adapt to the urban change and, in this study, within the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA). This is because urban agriculture serves as a source of livelihood for urban dwellers and a source of vital food ingredients which helps address food security concerns in the city. This study employs an exploratory sequential mixed method to investigate this phenomenon, which first uses a qualitative methodology and then quantitative methodology to investigate the changes that have occurred within the GAMA and how the farmers are adapting to these changes. A heterogeneous sampling aproach was used to select a total of 29 farmers from 10 farm sites for the qualitative data, while a multistage sampling approach was used to select 251 farmers from 16 farm sites for the quantitative data. The changes within the urban space realized by farmers include climate, land scarcity, increased population, and lifestyle dynamics. The population increase and lifestyle change, for instance, increased demand for vegetables and land scarcity caused farmers to move to secured lands, which led to farmers enjoying security on those lands. However, increased population, for instance, led to more unplanned settlements, which negatively resulted in polluted streams for farming. It also led to land scarcity that has resulted in the eviction of farmers from their farmlands. In adapting to some of the effects of these changes, farmers used several water sources to reduce their dependence on the polluted streams and embarked on intensification and relocated to cheap and cost‐free lands to be able to manage the land scarcity challenge. All these adaptation strategies prove farmers' resilience to the intense urban changes, which affect their farming activities. This calls for a specialized and focused support for urban agriculture by stakeholders responsible for the promotion of urban agriculture.